1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to contact centers for customer communications and more particularly to contact centers which provide a method and system for analyzing a customer""s experience in communicating with the contact center.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephone call centers are facilities for receiving incoming telephone calls and for responding to the calls by taking messages, interactively directing the caller to a preferred service or information provider, or providing advertising or informational messages on behalf of a sponsoring client. For example, a caller dialing into the customer service department of a particular home appliance manufacturer may initially be presented with a recorded voice menu from which the caller may respond by entering the appropriate number on a telephone key pad for the desired department, service, or information. Such menus are included in automated attendant systems to provide multiple options to the caller to accommodate the anticipated needs or inquiries of each caller. The caller could also be queried to provided information, such as the caller""s account number or the last name of a sought person. Such systems are known as Interactive Voice Response (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cIVRxe2x80x9d) systems. Both systems generally also offer the caller the option of speaking with a real person, in which case the call is often placed in a queue and answered by the first available agent. Systems for controlling the queuing and routing of such live calls to agents are known as Automatic Call Distribution (hereinafter xe2x80x9cACDxe2x80x9d) systems. Telephone call centers may be as simple as an alternative answering service for an individual during the hours the person is out of the office, in which case the individual can periodically contact the call center for messages. At the other end of the spectrum are call centers through which the caller can inquire about product information and ultimately order a product, charging the purchase to a credit account, all without ever having to enter a store. Call centers can also provide out-bound services in which the call center agents initiate calls to prospective customers and respond to earlier calls and inquiries. Such telephone call centers are generally described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,869 to Brooks et al., which is incorporated herein by reference.
As used herein, the term, xe2x80x9ccustomer,xe2x80x9d refers to both the individual calling into the call center for information or to access the available services and the individual who is called by the call center. An xe2x80x9cagentxe2x80x9d is the call center individual responsible for answering the customer""s inquiries and directing the customer to the appropriate individual, department, information source, or service as required to satisfy the customer""s needs, regardless of whether the customer or the agent initiated the call. A xe2x80x9cmonitorxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csupervisorxe2x80x9d is the individual responsible for listening to the conversation between the customer and the agent, either in real time or after the end of the call while using a recording of the call, to review the agent""s performance and to improve the quality of the customer""s experience. The monitor may be a call center employee or may be a third party individual responsible for monitoring agent and call center compliance with certain procedures and standards. A xe2x80x9cclientxe2x80x9d is the individual or entity that contracts the call center to receive or initiate telephone calls on behalf of and directed to the individual or entity. For simplicity, call centers are hereinafter described in terms of handling in-bound calls, even though they can also handle out-bound calls.
While large manufacturers, service providers, and information providers have provided in-house call centers to respond to the inquiries of their customers and potential customers, third party telephone call centers have been established whereby calls to several target companies may actually ring and be answered within a third party call center for providing a response, rather than in the locations or offices of the companies themselves. The company the caller is desiring to contact is identified to the call center agent by the telephone number and/or menu response entered by the caller. As such, the call centers may be located thousands of miles away from the actual sought manufacturer or individual.
The monitoring of incoming calls, along with the verbal responses of the call center agents, is a well-known quality monitoring and enhancement practice within telephone call centers. The transactions are reviewed, and the agents being monitored are counseled to improve the quality of the service they provide to the customer. Additionally, some of the conversations are recorded to comply with the requirements certain agencies and businesses face regarding the recording and archiving of transaction information, e.g., stock market trades. This monitoring can occur in real time, while the conversation or telephone contact is occurring, or the verbal data and information entered through the telephone key pads can be logged or stored for subsequent review. Such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,914,951 to Bentley et al., which is incorporated herein by reference.
Specialized devices have been developed for the full time and selective recording or logging of calls to a call center. Such an apparatus has been manufactured by Comverse Infosys, Inc. of Woodbury, N.Y., under the product name ULTRA. The ULTRA system provides for full time recording of all calls, on-demand and event-driven recording for transaction verification (such as for sales centers), archival of voice data, and instant playback. The ULTRA equipment is installed within the call center, offers a variety of audio compression and archive storage options, and is accessible for audio data retrieval across a local area network (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cLANxe2x80x9d). Comverse Infosys, Inc. also markets its MENTOR software package for capturing call center data, including audio data and agent screen data, and for monitoring and scoring call center agents.
Referring now to FIG. 1, there is illustrated an exemplary telephone call center system. Incoming telephone calls from customers 100 are received via the public switched telephone network (PSTN) 101 and processed by the PBX/ACD 102. The IVR portion (not shown) of the PBX/ACD 102 interacts with the customer to determine the nature of the call and the service or information requested by the customer. Although not shown in FIG. 1, the PBX/ACD 102 may include audio databases for directly responding to the customer""s inquiries as entered by the customer speaking into his or her telephone or making entries through the telephone keypad. Should the customer indicate a desire to speak with an agent, the PBX/ACD 102 selectively routes the call to available agents operating agent workstations 104. The conversations between the customers 100 and the agents are selectively recorded by a monitor module 106 in a monitoring system 111, and stored in a database 108 together with data corresponding to the agents PC screens (provided via line 105). While all conversations may be recorded in their entirety, typically only a small portion of the calls (e.g., 4-10%) are recorded to save space on the call center database 108; and, of those recorded calls, only a portion of the conversation may subsequently be reviewed. In a rules-based recording system, such as the one displayed in FIG. 1, the recording rules reside in a rules database 110 and control the recording of the conversations by the monitor module 106. Personnel responsible for monitoring the calls may access the information stored on database 108 through their respective supervisor workstations 112 for evaluation of the performance of an agent at one of the workstations 104.
The information gleaned from the telephone call is used by the supervisor or monitor to monitor the performance of the call center agents for identification of any possible training needs. However, the information gathered is limited to the audio conversation between the caller and the agent, any data entered by the caller through the telephone key pad, and the screens viewed by the agent. Additionally, the amount of information available to the monitor is very limited and cannot fully recreate the complete environment experienced by the caller and the agent during the course of the telephone contact. As such, the monitor is restricted in thoroughly evaluating the performance of the agent and in completely understanding the experience of the caller during the telephone contact. Furthermore, telephone call center monitoring and recording are limited to the audio and key pad data exchanged between the customer and agent, notwithstanding the multitude of electronic media that is presently used to effect communication and transactions between customers and businesses.
Furthermore, customer communications with businesses have expanded beyond the simple telephone and now involves a full range of electronic media, such as electronic mail, facsimile, and Internet interaction. Therefore, it has become necessary for telephone call center systems to provide the capability of processing and managing increasing volumes of diverse electronic media and data with which customers and business can remotely interact. The traditional telephone call center will need to evolve into a multimedia contact center. Accordingly, traditional telephone call center systems are not capable of capturing all of the electronic data associated with a multimedia transaction in which the customer utilizes all the media resources available to fulfill a transaction; and, therefore, telephone call center systems are unable to recreate such multimedia transactions for subsequent playback and monitoring.
A key issue in the market place relates to so called customer relationship management (xe2x80x9cCRMxe2x80x9d) and particularly to finding tools for improving customer relationships. Available telephone call centers provide a valuable tool for capturing the customer contact with the system and evaluating the performance of agents in the handling of calls. However, they do not necessarily provide reliable information regarding how the call is perceived by the customer making the call. While available post-call IVR data collection methods can be used to solicit the callers"" opinion and add to the database which can be viewed by an evaluator, such xe2x80x9cactivexe2x80x9d methods for evaluating the customer""s experience rely too heavily on the cooperation of the customer to provide the data. Further, the customer who is already upset by the way his or her call is being handled, is typically not disposed to respond to an additional set of IVR questions. Therefore, there is not currently available any passive system for automatically evaluating the customer""s experience from the customer point of view and without requiring the customer to provide separate input regarding the customer""s opinion of his or her experience.
In summary, while available quality monitoring systems provide the capability to offer some insight into how customers view their call center experiences, (thereby allowing the call center manager to effect change when it is clear that these experiences need to be improved), available systems are based on either a supervisor""s subjective evaluation of a customer""s experience when monitoring the call, or post-call IVR collection of information input by the customer.
It is an object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for automatically scrutinizing customer experiences with a contact center. Based on the outcome of this analysis, unsatisfactory customer experiences are identified for further investigation by contact center personnel and remedial action may be taken so as to avoid the loss of a customer due to a poor customer experience.
In one aspect, the present invention is directed to a method for analyzing a customer communication with the contact center. The customer communication is reviewed and a parameter of the communication is identified. Then it is automatically determined whether the parameter of the customer communication indicates an unsatisfactory customer experience.
In another aspect of the present invention, a predetermined class of customers is automatically selected and customer communications for the selected class of customers are reviewed. For each of the customer communications, at least one parameter is identified and it is automatically determined whether the identified at least one parameter of each of the customer communications indicates an unsatisfactory customer experience. As a result, the communications of an identified class of customers (for example, highly valued or premier customers) can be automatically analyzed to determined whether this class of customers is having satisfactory or unsatisfactory customer experiences when contacting the contact center.
In another aspect, the present invention is directed to a contact center for recording and analyzing customer communications. The contact center includes a monitoring system for recording customer communications. A customer experience analyzing unit reviews the customer communications, identifies at least one parameter of the customer communications and automatically determines whether the identified parameter of the customer communications indicates an unsatisfactory customer experience.
In still another aspect of the present invention, the customer communication is reviewed to determine the stress level of the communication. Based on this stress level, it is then automatically determined whether the customer communication was unsatisfactory or negative, as viewed from the vantage point of the customer.
Thus, the method and system of the present invention provide a manager with quick insight into the frequency of unsatisfactory customer experiences. For example, if the communication was a telephone call, was it too long, too short, very stressful, interrupted many times, transferred to too many agents, etc. Thus, unsatisfactory customer experiences can be automatically determined and evaluated.
The method and system of the present invention provide significant advantages over the prior art in that they allow a contact center manager to quickly improve the quality of the operation of the contact center by automatically providing an objective indication to the manager of positive and negative experiences of customers in their communications with the contact center. This is because the method and system of the present invention are directed to a passive interpretive device and method, as opposed to an active device and method (such as a set of IVR questions) which ask for direct customer response. Further, a communication which is determined to represent an unsatisfactory or stressful experience for the customer can be tagged, so that a supervisor can take remedial action with respect to the unsatisfactory or stressful call. In addition, the customer account corresponding to the unsatisfactory or stressful call can be tagged so that in future communications the agent handling the contact will be informed that the customer has previously had an unsatisfactory experience. Thus, the method and system of the present invention provide a particularly advantageous tool for customer relationship management (CRM) in that they alert an enterprise of a tenuous customer relationship.